


Of Curses

by navigator_noir (navigatorsghost)



Category: The Transformers (Cartoon Generation One)
Genre: Gen, Glorification Of Violence, M/M, Starvation, plug-and-play interfacing, tragic backstory hell, unrepentant villainy, wireplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-07-16 05:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16079171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navigatorsghost/pseuds/navigator_noir
Summary: All of Unicron's creations share the curse of their creator's legacy. For each of them, it takes a uniquely personal form.





	1. Of Hunger - Cyclonus

The hunger gnaws at him.

He holds it, because he has no choice. He accepts that the boundaries of his universe will forever be delineated by the red haze of low fuel warnings. He lives day upon day with the pangs deep in his systems, with the phantom pain of vast, empty reserve tanks that aren't even in the same dimension of space as his processors, permanently mass-shifted out along with so much of the rest of him. He endures the constant alerts, the needles flickering in and out of red zones, the tight-margined calculations every time he leaves for a mission or enters a battle. 

And he does not permit it to rule him. He does not rant, he does not complain, he does not steal or scheme to get more than his share of what little they have. He is as hard on himself as he is on the others, and for that, they grudgingly call him fair. 

He accepts as much without comment. 

He does not tell them that of all of them, he suffers the most. He does not tell them that he remembers - dazedly, hazily, through memory files corrupted by severance-trauma and system shock - that he remembers how it felt to draw on a power that was as limitless as the black of space, to be filled with the darkness and fuelled by it and to always be able to ask for _more_ with a single thought. He does not tell them that the endless hunger he lives with now is too much like an echo of his creator's, that he feels it like a great and terrible hand upon his shoulder, that it reminds him of things he wishes he could forget. That he disciplines it as he does because he is afraid of what he might become if ever he does not. 

And in all of this time, he has found only one source of relief.

He still does not wholly understand how Galvatron has escaped so much of the hunger. But the Herald of Unicron spent months alone, soaking in the plasma pits of Thrull, and somehow, over that time, his systems adapted themselves to absorb the plasma’s energy and irrevocably bond with it. Galvatron runs on some unfathomable blend of fire and light that should consume him from the inside out; his internal workings defy analysis, he seems to exist in perpetual breach of the law of conservation of energy, but Cyclonus is unperturbed by that. Galvatron makes the impossible possible just by willing it so, and Cyclonus is never surprised. Whatever it is, it is impossible to duplicate - Galvatron's systems evolved of themselves, he was not modified in any fashion that can be repeated in another mechanism, and probably no frame save his could even hold such power anyway. He is, in this as in all things, one of a kind. 

But what cannot be given entire can still, at times, be briefly shared. And then, and only then, Cyclonus allows himself to let his hunger show. With his lord's mouth on his and his lord's hands on his armour and his lord's circuitry hardlinked to his own, _then_ he dares to open up his defences and beg to be filled, because he knows that Galvatron _can_ , and Galvatron _will_. Their joining leaves no space between them for the Devourer's darkness to slither into his processors; this is purely _theirs_ , this is fire and pleasure and respite, this is systems singing with power and needles swinging up into sectors they can never hope to reach now by any other means. And it feels like defiance, knowing that their creator never meant them to be able to cheat his curse like this. It feels like being freed. 

It never lasts, it never could. Galvatron's power is something too aetheric and arcane to ever fill his tanks; but it can fill his circuits and trick his systems, for as long as their connection holds, into thinking that he has _enough_. And that is more than he once hoped for, and as much as he will ever ask.


	2. Of Destruction - Galvatron

"Violence isn't the answer to everything, Galvatron! If you keep destroying whatever displeases you, sooner or later you'll be left with a universe that's just you and your handful of favourites in a wasteland of stars and ash!"

" _What have I ever done to make you think I'd have a problem with that?!_ "

It isn't the words themselves that anger him, or even the truth in them. Rather, it is the presumption - so arrogant, so typically _Autobot_ \- that he must somehow be unaware of the consequences of his own choices. That all it would take for him to act differently would be for him to _know better_.

The idea that he might _already_ know exactly what he wants is clearly lost on this Autobot, which is why Galvatron permits himself the indulgence of levelling his arm and pouring a blast of plasma fire into their self-righteous face. There are cries of horror from the other Autobots as their companion falls in smoking ruin, and in the timbre of their voices, Galvatron hears the same accusations as always. _Madmech. Berserker. Unstable. Crazy._ As if his actions made anything less than perfect sense! Life is a game in which every player gets to set their own victory conditions, and Galvatron has freely and knowingly chosen his. It's not even as though he tries to make a secret of them.

He was not built for secrets, after all. He wears everything he is blazoned on his breastplate for the galaxy to read, and it is no concern of his if others refuse to believe what they see. He cannot change what his maker gave him, experience has taught him that much: Unicron built him to destroy, etched that purpose into his spark and code like an addiction he would have no choice but to feed for as long as there was anything left for it to consume. No Autobot could begin to conceive of how that feels, to be forever drunk on the taste of fire and thrilled by the sound of twisting steel, to see beauty and splendour where others see pain and ruin, to know the deepest fulfilment only as worlds burn in his wake. He is eternally driven by the desire to strike the universe just to feel it shatter beneath his fist... and he cannot delete those lines of code. He cannot dispel his creator's curse on him. He cannot be other than what he _is_.

Neither does he wish to be. He is the gun held to the head of the galaxy, a virtuoso lead performer in the cosmic symphony of destruction, and _that_ much, at least, is a gift, not a curse. His body is his weapon, his power is his glory, and he embraces the truth of his own nature with exultant joy. From what he is and what he was made for, he desires neither respite nor redemption.

His defiance, his private victory, rests in one simple fact: he is no longer Unicron's puppet executioner. _He_ is now the one who decides what he destroys, and what he does _not_ destroy. Every time he pulls a blow whose full strength would have broken one of his own favourites in a flash of temper, he wins. Every time he banishes a traitor instead of atomising them, he wins. Every time he unmakes whatever seeks to control him, he wins. Every time he selects a target at _his_ whim, instead of following the commands that still scratch in the back of his mind, he wins-

"You won't get away with this, Galvatron!"

He can only laugh. They have no idea what he's getting away with every day of his life.


	3. Of Temptation - Scourge

He never means to do it, it just _happens_.

Sometimes he thinks it comes as an inescapable part of being able to see through the walls of reality the way he can. He sees everything that the others around him miss, and that somehow includes being able to see _opportunities_. He sees weaknesses, vulnerabilities. He sees the little cracks in things where he could slide his claws in and open them up wide. He sees _power_ where others overlook it.

And in itself that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but his downfall is that he can never resist. Even when he knows he's going to regret it, even when he can already hear Galvatron yelling and see Cyclonus's disapproving stare as plain as if they were both standing in front of him, he always has to try. If there's a chance to grab for power, for control, for leverage, for respect or authority or just simple indulgence, he always has to take a shot at it. It's a gambler's madness of the worst kind, and he _knows_ that, but he can't get rid of it.

He used to put it down to being the weakest of the three of them, the least regarded, the one who has to live by his wits because everyone knows he doesn't have Galvatron's power or Cyclonus's innate authority. He used to come up with every excuse under the stars for why it made perfectly good sense to get involved in this or that foolhardy attempt at self-aggrandisement. These days, he knows deep down that it's nothing as simple as that.

In its way, it's far simpler. It's also far worse. It's his version of the craving that Unicron forged into all of them, his share of a threefold curse. He was built to seek, to find, to sink his claws into whatever he hunted and not let go until it was consumed - combine that with a lust for dominion and self-indulgence inherited straight from his creator, and Scourge is stuck with, well, this. With a total inability to _not_ get himself into trouble every single time.

Almost the worst part is that his triadmates _understand_ , to the point where even Galvatron expects it of him. Where even _Cyclonus_ doesn't question his loyalty any more when it happens, just sighs and cuffs him around the head and drags him home out of whatever catastrophe he's found his way into. Galvatron inevitably yells, occasionally shoots him, but always takes him back without question. They never stop _trusting_ him, and that makes him feel even worse about the fact that he knows it's always going to happen again.

He tries. He tells himself every time that next time he'll be stronger, that he'll _think_ before he stretches out his claws. That he'll resist that treacherous little whisper deep inside his processors that says _take what you can, what harm can it do?_ He always swears that next time he won't fall for it. But every time it makes such perfect sense in the moment, and before he can recognise the situation for what it is, he's sucked in yet again. He supposes it wouldn't be a curse if it was that easy to get rid of.

It just irks him that it's the one thing in the whole damned galaxy that he can never, ever manage to see coming.


End file.
